A broad group of European broadcasting associations has written to the European Commission reiterating a request to designate relevant connected television operating systems and virtual assistant platform operators as gatekeepers in its review of the Digital Markets Act. The letter is signed by a range of organisations, including the Association of Commercial Television and Video on Demand Services in Europe, the European Broadcasting Union, and the European association of television and radio sales houses.
In their submission they note that the television operating system market is becoming more concentrated around large ecosystem platforms.
From 2019 to 2024, Samsung Tizen OS maintained a 24% market share, Android TV increased its market share from 16% to 23%, and Amazon Fire OS rose from 5% to 12%. None of these currently has a dominant position in what remains a fragmented market.
The submission states: “With the future viability of many European TV broadcasters at stake, and with millions of EU businesses and consumers relying on CTVs to promote and access an expanding range of content via TV applications, it is crucial that the Commission designate major TV operating systems as gatekeepers and ensure adequate oversight to guarantee fairness and contestability.”
While connected televisions can offer significant opportunities for European businesses to develop and compete, there is a risk of being undermined by entrenched gatekeeping practices.
Another concern is virtual assistants, like Alexa or Siri. The submissions says that artificial intelligence assistants could become de facto media gatekeepers.
No television operating system or virtual assistant is currently designated under the DMA. The European Commission has designated Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, and ByteDance, but only at the level of specific services.
The letter calls on the European Commission to designate major connected television operating systems and virtual assistant providers as gatekeepers, open a market investigation on the basis of qualitative thresholds, and review the definition of business users to encompass all entities that rely on virtual assistants to reach end users.
The intervention comes at a pivotal moment, as the European Commission conducts its first formal review of the Digital Markets Act, due to report in May 2026. That process is explicitly intended to assess whether the regulation remains fit for purpose in a rapidly evolving market, including the impact of artificial intelligence and new interface layers. In that context, the question is no longer only whether existing gatekeepers should be constrained, but whether the scope of regulation should extend to the mechanisms that increasingly determine how audiovisual services are discovered and accessed.
The issue is not only who controls connected television platforms, but who controls the entry point to audiovisual services. As discovery becomes mediated by operating systems and assistants, it risks becoming a gatekeeper in its own right. Recognising that function could prompt a shift towards regulating discovery as a distinct layer, with implications for how services are listed, ranked, and made available across devices.